Interactive online digital entertainment has advanced on many fronts in recent years, especially with respect to video gaming. For example, users can login to websites to find an opponent and then a game of chess or a card game in the virtual world. As a player may be competing against another player, the communication is bi-directional. However, not all video games can be played online. For a game of chess where time to make a move does not have an immediate and consequential effect on the outcome, players have time to contemplate the next move, counter move, game strategy and so on and the game does not need to provide real-time feedback. However, in a majority of real-time video games, time needed to make a decision and act upon that decision is relatively short so that players involved feel a sense of realism and engagement. In such a real-time game, action must occur in close proximity to real life events. Real-time action is required for the action games, simulation games such as flight simulators and sport games. In most cases persistent communications, scoring, player attributes, etc. cannot be offered together with real-time realism and engagement.
Another difficulty to the network-based game systems is scalability. While some existing network-based systems can handle tens of thousands of game players, it is a serious challenge to provide game applications in real time reliably and simultaneously to millions or even tens of millions of game players. Another challenge is to provide a large number of game rooms each hosting a number of game players. A further desired feature for network-based game systems is to effectively provide a wide selection of games to the players while maintaining the same performance in real-time responses to a large number of players or offering many games to game players within a unified social context and user identity.